


Resigned

by Subtilior



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 09:36:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2727500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Subtilior/pseuds/Subtilior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the plane crashes, and the serum wears off, and Erik and Charles are left looking at each other in a hospital room - what will be said, and what left unsaid?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resigned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> **Souscirrus** , for your Request #2. I hope you enjoy!

Erik’s staring after Charles; Charles has just gone. The door is not the kind that slams. Otherwise, Erik is sure that Charles would have slammed it.

If he tips his head, he can just glimpse one of Charles’ hands.

“So you were always an asshole.”

Erik grits his teeth, turning. “I take it we’re best buddies in the future.”

The sound of a lighter; the smell of cigar smoke. Erik presses his lips together.

… Ten years. Time enough, Erik supposes, to forget what cigars smelled like.

“I spend a lot of years tryin’ to bring you down, bub.”

“How’s that work out for you?”

“You’re like me. You’re a survivor.” Logan looks away, out the window.

 _True enough_. He survived enough, even before being locked away – but Erik _focuses_. Hehas to stay focused. Otherwise the taste of the whiskey, the scent of the cigar, and all the metal plucking at his attention from the floor and the walls, the ceiling and the wings … all that metal will not let his mind go.

Cigar smoke plumes over from the corner. “You wanna pick all that shit up?”

Erik turns and reaches out with his power. The silverware; the chess pieces –

\- but something is rattling.

“What the hell?” Logan snarls.

“I’m not doing that.” Erik furrows his brow and takes hold of the metal that’s moving … _wrong._ It’s near the engine; _no_ , it _is_ the engine – he pitches his voice to carry. “Charles?”

“He’s not doing it either!”

“I know. It’s not anything having to do with –”

“ _Shit_. Lehnsherr, you gotta –”

And that’s when the plane catches fire.

Most of the time, the dream ends there.

This time, though, Erik reaches with his power and wrenches the walls of the cockpit away from the flames racing towards it along electrical wires, seams and solders and bends and turns – it should not move that fast, fire _doesn’t_ , but this one does. Logan is shouting in his ear, but he has Charles, _safe_ , wrapped in metal – and he’s taken hold of Hank, too, but then pain stabs through both his eardrums, and he’s suddenly, terribly, _freezing cold_ –

\--------

Erik gasps awake.

“Wha’ …”

“Charles?” He turns instantly. “Are you –”

But Charles is mumbling in his sleep again. Or: whatever it is, that passes for sleep.

It doesn’t do to stay still, to let himself doze off. Erik shakes the rain from his hair and rises. He takes hold of the metal bars of the travois and adjusts his shoes.

The travois is not as heavy as it should be, and not just because Charles is light. He can’t use all his power – the fall, and the rescue, seems to have done something serious. He’d worry about it, but that worry is useless, even when it scrabbles sharp and awful at his mind. Erik shoves it away and starts walking.

\--------

It’s slow going, through the wilderness. Erik sticks to streambeds, and thanks G-d it’s summer. They’re in Canada, and he thanks G-d they weren’t too far over the ocean. Hank has to be alive, somewhere – Erik had felt the metal with him in it land – but he had lost control of it two hundred meters from the shore, and then it was too far away, after that same metal got shaken off, to track. Erik remembers how Beast had choked him, effortlessly. Perhaps it’s just as well that he’s not – except, Charles needs a _doctor_ , or Logan’s ability to heal himself. Logan, and that obnoxious belt buckle, Erik can’t feel anywhere.

He knows his power will come back. Erik sidesteps a boulder and lets the travois hover; even that much effort makes his head throb. His power always comes back.

He doesn’t think about what might have happened in Paris.

Erik has to make sure Charles drinks. Charles doesn’t run a fever, not anymore, but he’s been in some of delirium since the second day.

He stops and opens a bottle of water – the second-to-last, of what he took from the survival kit, folded up with the cockpit, which was a stroke of luck, but –

“I can’t feel my legs.”

“I know,” Erik whispers. He tips the bottle against Charles’ mouth. “Drink.”

“Erik,” Charles’ voice slurs. “I can’t feel my –”

“Please, drink.”

“You abandoned me.” Pale lips move against the water flowing over them. “You took her away from me.”

“… I know.”

“They’re close now. Six – no. Eight. You did it,” Charles says, his eyes unfocused, “you rescued us. They’re on a fishing trip.”

“ _Where_ , Charles?” His knuckles are white on the travois bars. “Tell me. _Hurry_ – you need a doctor.”

“I ‘m a doctor.”

“Tell me.”

“South … by southwest. Keep going.”

Putting the cap back on the water bottle takes two tries. His hands are shaking.

“Erik …”

Erik bends close. Contorted in pain, Charles’ face looks terrible.

Especially as his mouth twists in a rictus grin. “You must be so proud of yourself.”

\--------

 _Please_ , Erik thinks at Charles, as hard as he can, from the side of the camp bed. _I’m sorry_. _Please forgive me_.

The fishermen are looking for Hank and Logan, now. Charles has not seized for a least three hours, so Erik had told them to go. Had volunteered to guard their camp, but a useless boy had stayed behind to gawk at them anyway.

Charles had flicked open his eyes, tipped his head – and the boy had wandered off to a bedroll and fallen down, asleep.

Erik shivers, remembering. Charles could have done that to him at any time.

“Not exactly a high priority.”

“You’re awake –”

“Obviously.”

“Are you in pain? There’s aspirin – they have a vial of morphine. I can –”

“No, you can’t. You can’t do anything.”

They’re past arguing. They had their ranging up and down, shouting argument, when Charles could stand and snarl at him, eyes blazing blue. Half of Erik had hoped he would punch him again. The other half …

He tries not to think about what the other half, what almost all, what _all_ of him wants now. Instead, he takes the soup he’s made. “Can you eat something?”

Charles stares up at the canvas of the lean-to, stretched about his camp bed. “I don’t know.”

“If it’s – if you’re concerned about –”

Bodily functions, he means to finish, but there’s no way of finishing it that’s not embarrassing. Except it seems that Charles is not embarrassed, not at all – but _angry_. “I felt you. _Helping_ me.”

“Oh.” Erik feels himself flush. “I would have asked you, but –”

“But you thought I was unconscious? I could hear you. I can hear _all_ of your thoughts, and I’ve been able to since I last lay down, Erik. You would have asked, you say? That doesn’t change the fact that you didn’t.”

Which is true.

“… I’m sorry,” Erik says, wretched. “I’m asking now.”

Charles sighs. “I suppose I could eat something.”

Erik reaches behind him, to ease him up – Charles permits it, eyes fixed on the canvas. “Interesting.”

“What?”

“It’s all coming back. Those fishermen haven’t found Hank, you know. They’re not going to.”

“Why not? Is he –” Erik’s throat closes up tight, because if Hank is gone now, too, that’s one more unforgivable to add to the tally. What will happen, if he’s dead? What if someone finds his body, and calls the government, and _they_ call the States and the FBI and –

“Oh, he’s alive, don’t fret.” Charles reaches for the soup, and takes a drink of it from the tin cup. “He’s just in Québec City.”

Erik drops the spoon.

\--------

It takes them two days to reach Québec City; there is no helicopter to be spared, apparently, and, “The more people fuss, Erik,” Charles tells him, “the more likely we get a visit from someone looking for you.”

So they’re camped out inside, now, in a hospital room. Hank is back in human form, and haranguing Charles’ doctor.

Logan is nowhere to be found.

“It worries me,” Erik says, from across the makeshift chessboard.

“What about your power?” says Charles, moving his knight. “Doesn’t that worry you?”

“The cockpit and the flight was an effort, Charles, and then I think the travois put paid to my exceptional nature.” Erik tries a smile. “Don’t fret. It will come back. It always has, before.”

“… Before?

Erik does not need to speak. He merely stares into Charles’ eyes, so blue, and takes a deep breath. _See for yourself_.

There’s only a moment of hesitation, before Charles is reaching in – and that same feeling of warmth unspooling down his spine, quicksilver tendrils of light cradling his thoughts and combing through them, gentle as hands petting a cat – that same feeling that he remembers so well from that time they had together, on the terrace.

 _Rage and serenity_ –

“They drugged you,” Charles whispers.

“To start. For a few years, I think. And then …. They’re making something, Charles. There must be more than one project; not just forces to combat our kind."

For the news had been full of nothing but that: the Paris Peace Accords, dragging on; Bolivar Trask, apprehended for sharing state secrets with the North Vietnamese. _Sentinels_.

“Perhaps it’s just as well we did not reach Paris, my friend. Can you imagine what you would have done, if you feel this strongly about what you’ve only seen on a television screen?”

Erik casts his eyes down to the board; nudges his rook without thinking.

“ _Ah_ –” Charles breathes. “You don’t want to do that.”

“I’m doing it anyway.”

“Are you, really?” A smile.

Erik feels all his breath leave him in a rush. Charles … _smiling_ at him –

“You said,” he stammers, also without thinking, “you would never touch my mind again.”

“I suppose I did.” Charles advances his bishop. “Check.”

“But now you have –”

“Because I’ve been thinking, Erik. You could have left me to die again, you know.”

“Charles, I _didn’t –_ ”

“Shot, on a beach? What did you think would happen, to a man left bleeding, hours away from a doctor?”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“Since then, I’ve concluded just that. But this time … You didn’t.”

Erik shakes his head.

“Why not?”

It’s impossible to swallow. “I don’t –”

Charles waits.

“I didn’t want you dead. I _never_ wanted you dead. We’re brothers, you and I –”

“This again,” Charles sighs.

“ – we want the same things.”

“Some things, maybe. Others …. Consider, Erik: you’ve been imprisoned for _years_. You’ve had plenty of time to consider vengeance, and war – but you’ve also been experimented on, again; deprived of any and all reasonable human contact –”

“Why didn’t you come see me?”

It’s then that he feels it again. The careful, tentative touch of Charles’ mind.

“You could have – any time you wanted, you could have reached me with your power.” Erik can hardly speak. “Why _didn’t_ you?”

The touch is warm for a moment, before it slides away. “First I was angry. Then things started spiraling out of all control, Erik. I could never be sure that if I touched your mind, I wouldn’t – do things to you. And then I started the serum, and –”

“I shouldn’t have said –”

“I shouldn’t have – oh. Great minds,” Charles says, his smile pained. “Your move.”

“I resign.”

“What? You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t played a complete game with you in years, Erik, that’s why not! Don’t spoil it.”

“I don’t want to play – I want to talk.”

“We can talk while we –”

“ _No_ , I want – Please. Please, let me …”

And Erik does what he’s wanted to do for longer than this week, longer than his imprisonment, longer than he’s known Charles’ face: what he’s wanted since the first time he felt the touch of that mind.

He takes Charles’ right hand – the one touching the board – and brings it to his lips.

It is silent in the room. There’s a burst of commotion outside – a clatter –

“What was that?” Charles says.

“Someone dropped – a tray of instruments.”

“And where?”

Erik feels like he might smile again. It’s a strange feeling – much like the one moving through … _all_ of him. “Two doors down.”

Charles smiles back at him. “How marvelous.”

All Erik can do is gaze, holding Charles’ hand in both of his. Charles, who he thought he had lost – who he thought he would lose again. “Can I tell you something?”

 _I love you_ , he means to say.

“Of course you can; we’ll talk,” says Charles, briskly. “I think we have a lot of discussing to do, over the next few days. Our very own peace accord. Because – have you thought of that, Erik?”

“Of what?”

“No sight or sign of Logan; Trask discredited and disgraced. Perhaps all that was needed was for us _not_ to go to Paris. Perhaps the future holds different things for us, now.”

“I’m not sure it could be that simple.”

“Well, we’ll talk about it. All of us.”

Erik blinks – and hears the answer in his mind before Charles says, out loud:

“She’s on her way.”


End file.
